For more than sixty years, Sri Lanka has suffered repeated man-made disasters. Every few years, something man-made (manufactured) happens that pushes the country back by almost a decade. These setbacks did not come from natural disasters; they came from selfish people, from violence, from poor leadership, and from decisions made without thinking about the nation’s future.

Since 1971, uprisings, terrorism, and political chaos have taken thousands of young lives. Each time, the country lost not only its youth but also its stability, its economy, and its hope.

But the deeper problem began even earlier. From the 1960s onward, many political leaders stopped caring about long-term development. They focused on personal gains and power, not the progress of the country. They made decisions for personal gain (financially and politically), not national benefit.

In recent years, the situation has become even more alarming. People who exposed corruption—whistleblowers, honest officers, financial scandals, and potential witnesses—have been threatened, silenced, or even killed. A mafia-style political culture has taken root, far worse than what existed decades ago. It reminds many of the fear and instability that surrounded the events of 1971.

How can a nation move forward when:

* Law and order is weak,

* Financial fraud happens repeatedly,

* Uninformed politicians make decisions for short-term gain and neglect the growth of the country,

* The unitary nature and sovereignty of the country are threatened, and

* The judiciary is manipulated, weakening justice and democracy?

No country can progress and maintain true democracy under these conditions. If this continues, Sri Lanka risks falling into a deeper crisis—possibly worse than the collapse seen in Ethiopia’s recent turmoil.

A Message to Every Voter

From now on, at each election, the responsibility lies with the people.

Don’t vote for untrustworthy people or those who have committed violent or fraudulent activity,

Don’t blindly vote for a party—study their policies (not gimmicks) and see whether you can trust them.

Don’t be carried away by posters, advertisements, and slogans (these are paid activities by beneficiaries), with empty promises.

Every voter must think carefully about:

* The nation’s future, maintenance of the unitary nature and its sovereignty,

* Law and order and the safety of their children,

* The stability of the economy, and

* The protection of democracy and the independence of justice.

Sri Lanka cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes. It cannot afford leaders who bring fear, division (religious, ethnic, etc.), or corruption. It cannot afford another decade lost.

The ballot box is the only peaceful tool the people have to protect the country. Use it wisely. Choose stability over chaos, integrity over corruption, and national interest over personal loyalty.

The future of Sri Lanka depends on the choices that you make now.

Sri Lanka has suffered one man-made disaster after another. Every few years, something (manufactured) happens that pushes the country’s development and economy back by nearly a decade. Since 1971, much of this damage came first from the JVP uprisings and later from the LTTE conflict. Each time, it is unfortunate that thousands of young people lose their lives for no good reason, and the nation (innocent) families) paid a heavy price.

Since the early 1960s onward, many so-called political leaders have stopped thinking about Sri Lanka’s long-term future. They focused on grabbing power at any cost in national elections, not progress. False promises and misleading voters mostly accomplished these.

In recent years, the situation has become even worse. People who raised genuine concerns, exposed major governmental corruptions and scandals, or acted as whistleblowers have been threatened, silenced, or even killed. A real mafia-like system now operates in the country—far worse than anything seen before. It feels dangerously similar (or can become worse) to the atmosphere that led to the 1971 tragedy.

How can a nation move forward when there is no law and order, when significant financial fraud happens one after another, and when politicians chase short-term personal gain instead of protecting the country’s future? How can democracy survive when the judiciary is manipulated, when judicial freedom is weakened, and when the unitary nature and sovereignty of the nation are put at risk? This cannot continue.

Unless something changes soon, Sri Lanka may face an even deeper financial, unruly, and social collapse—possibly worse than what happened in Ethiopia’s economic crisis.

by Dr. Sunil J Wimalawansa
Professor of Medicine

Where the mind is without fear

And the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up

Into fragments by narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depths of truth …

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father,

Let my country awake

That was not a man ‘for all seasons’ (who are plentiful) but a man for the ages, writing those words in this kali yugaya.

Do you hear them? Now? Now, as ever, as everywhere?

Fifty years ago, I wrote commentaries on each poem in Gitanjali, from which those lines are taken. They were a kind of ‘crib’, paid for by an early tutory, Atlas Hall, which sort of prepared students for examinations at tertiary level here and in London. One might note that Gitanjali and other works by writers in South Asia (other than those touted by spurious academics as ‘post-modernist’ and ‘post-colonial’, – read ‘pro-colonial’) – have long been sent out of the window of classrooms in this country.

The immediate occasion that called for these comments was the presentation of a selection of songs, from Tagore’s extensive body of work, at the Wendt last Monday. It was by the foremost exponent today of robindra sangeeth, Rezwana Chowdhury Bannya of Bangladesh & Santiniketan (yes, that sounds as if Santiniketan is a nation by itself). In a singularly happy namaskar towards each other, it was co-hosted by the High Commissions of Bangladesh & India. The fact that both have adopted Tagore’s songs as their national anthems may be indicative of ‘the breaking down of narrow domestic walls’. ‘The Partition of Bengal’, first attempted by the British over a hundred years ago, failed because the people, Tagore active among them, did not want it. Four decades later they, the Brits again, succeeded in rebuilding that wall though it remains porous. As Sarath Amunugama observed, in a felicitous address in which he referred both to ‘the partition’, and to national anthems, and as is well known here, Ananda Samarakone’s namo, namo matha was inspired by his stay at Santiniketan. In the 1930s to the 1960s the latter connection has vitalised our dancing, singing, ‘music-making’ and our knowledge of theatre.

A somewhat hilarious outcome of the latter occurred about ten years ago at the Tower Hall, when Suchitra Mitra, whose name would for the foreseeable future be inextricably associated with robindra-sangeeth, invited our ‘old boys’ of Santiniketan to come up and join her in their school song. Most of them had lost the words and more than there seemed to be of them had lost their voice, leaving Suchitra Mitra up there encouraging and reprimanding them like a Montessori teacher.

And now we have, before our astonished gaze, a Cricket World Cup with loads of some kinds of drama, including a battle royal among three South-Asian giants of that English game with the sort of statutory-leaders of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka present, polishing or twirling moustaches and waving gaily in the general direction of our millions of hoi polloi via TV cameras.

Sorry, yuga purusha, no trace of awareness around. So how could you and all of us whom you left behind (not that it could any longer matter to us as it did not to you), expect guilt?

The special issue of INDIA Perspectives (IP) that marked this occasion is a handsome work. The IP journal has always been a high-quality production but this was a revelation. Specialists in each area of Tagore’s interests and activities have contributed articles on his views on schooling, theatre, painting, religion, nationalism and internationalism, science, rural economics and so on, each from his/her perspective. What follows is drawn from that work.

Although he and Gandhi were friends and, says Amartya Sen, he had popularised the appellation Mahatma for Gandhi, Tagore had seen that the chakra was not the route to India’s future. There could be many views on that: Tagore may have overlooked its symbolic value or significance. After all, the bottom-line is that the European tribes became rich by pillaging the rest of the world and rendering those people poor. The textile industry in England, for instance, ‘developed’ by destroying the textile industry in Bengal; the methods adopted were various, the most direct being that of chopping off the fingers of the weavers. Tagore should have been aware of that.

The brutality of the British ‘raj’ was not unknown to him. Following the massacre of over 1,000 unarmed people at a gathering at Jaliawallah Bargh by a Brigadier (named Dyer) Tagore returned a ‘knighthood’ ‘bestowed’ on him by their monarch. A dozen years later, the oh-so-valiant Brits followed up the massacre at Jaliawallah Bargh by, in Tagore’s words, ‘a concerted homicidal attack, under cover of darkness, on defenseless prisoners undergoing the system of barbaric incarceration’. Any other examples, anyone?

Tagore had been an inveterate traveler and the questions that arise in ‘looking inwards and outwards’ tend to remain unresolved. He had foreseen that ‘science’ would be prostituted, that it would not serve the world community of living things, that it would become a man-made calamity: ‘Science is at the beginning of the invasion of the material world and there goes on a furious scramble for plunder. Often things look hideously materialistic, and shamelessly belie man’s own nature.’

Nevertheless he seems to have retained golden visions for what it was going to do: ‘But the day will come when some of the great processes of nature will be at the beck and call of every individual and at least the prime necessities of life will be supplied with very little care and cost’. (We have seen how Monsanto, Del Monte and fellow predators, have set about doing that). ‘To live will be as easy to man as to breathe, and his spirit will be free to create his own world.’ He was fortunate indeed in not being around to witness how the country he was born in and which had nourished his creativity has gone in the pursuit of command of the great processes of nature (and of her neighbours). Besides, the mega-mega weddings, etc., we are witness to the operations of an imperium hell-bent on evicting people from the lands, waterways and beaches that ‘the market’ covets.

How such a culture of science would choose to help the sick or, just a step further for such minds, to make the healthy ill, or, indeed, how such ‘science’ would be used to create, in Ralph Pieris’s term, ‘illth’ (not ‘wealth’), did not quite come to pass in his lifetime. Since his passing, we share a common experience of ‘patents’ on traditional medicines, including the most ubiquitous and widely / wisely used, kohomba or neem, of kotala himbutu and many others, acquired via ‘laws’ constructed by the ‘developed’ people aforementioned, and India’s experience in developing an antidote to the AIDS virus. They affirm the validity of Tagore’s ‘gut reaction’ to where ‘science’ may take the world and has indeed taken it.

Forty years ago Senaka Bibile initiated the construction and adoption of a formulary that reduced the number of drugs required in this country by some 80% and identified them by their generic name, and battle was joined. (Senaka was eventually eliminated/killed by a mercenary, from this part of this world, of Big-Pharma). That entity, Big-Pharma, has acquired control not only over the production of drugs and their marketing but over the entire range of activity that relates to health-care – systems of ‘referral’ and lab tests where such weren’t needed, so with hospitalisation or indoor treatment usually with yet more ‘tests’, ‘prescription drugs’, ‘insurance’ from an ‘approved’ company of blood suckers. Its control is most scandalously evident in the USA and includes a species of corruption that Tagore could not have conceived of. (robindra–sangeeth does not address such yet-to-be reality, nor do his plays and paintings). When Big-Pharma got their obedient servants in the USA administration to send in marines to force Bangladesh to allow their drugs in, the government and the people of Bangladesh, all honour to them, physically ‘repelled the boarders’.

Tagore lived in and came to terms with a changing world, and he responded to all of what he saw in terms that had not occurred to his contemporaries anywhere in ‘the known world’. There were others of course who had a like foresight. Though too numerous to mention here, I should think that Blake and Whitman belonged among them, – as did such great poets as Bharathari from centuries ago, and Subramaniam Bharathi, consigned to a pauper’s grave, from yesteryear. So many more through all the hundreds and thousands of years that don’t quite make up a kalpa.

We learn through the IP that Tagore’s name had been put up for the Nobel prize by a single member of the Royal Society, T S Moore, while 97 other members had collectively recommended Thomas Hardy. The Swedish Academy had picked Tagore out of 28 nominees. In a telegram conveying his acceptance of the award, Tagore expressed his appreciation of ‘the breadth of understanding which has brought the distant near, and has made the stranger a brother’. In these times, Sarkozy, Cameron and their ilk seem intent on making strangers of brothers.

A fallout of the instant fame it brought had been a loss of privacy (as Garcia Marquez and others discovered many decades later) and of the use of his time to get on with his work. Gitanjali was for the most part a rendering into English, by the poet himself, of his songs in Bangla. Translating a novel, short story or a play is no easy matter (as, with respect to Sinhala works, Ashley Halpe, Lakshmi de Silva, Vijitha Fernando et al could confirm). Hemingway had found the great Russians unreadable till he came upon the translations by Constance Garnett. Translating poetry is infinitely more difficult, (as Ranjini Obeyesekere and Lakshmi have shown) and Tagore was hounded by admirers to translate more of his work into English. He was called on to make his poetry accessible to those who had only English. His poems have since been put into English; among them, an effort I liked, a whole volume, was titled ‘I will not let you go’. Simply put, the title poem will not let you go.

Nevertheless, the task of translating works in other south Asian languages, to begin with, into Hindi, Bangla and Urdu and the other way is one that needs attention. Bangla has the second largest numbers of speakers in South Asia after Hindi – about two-thirds the number of Hindi-speakers. Bangladesh might consider setting up a kind of clearing house for such work, perhaps with SAARC support and located perhaps, at Silaideh, around Tagore’s ancestral land in Bangladesh. Maybe, as Tagore’s examples show, ‘start small’ would be a good approach.

On matters that have to do with ‘religion’, Tagore’s activities may be seen as being eclectic. He was a member of Brahmo, (of which Satyajit Ray and his father’s family were members), which took the Upanishads for text and had no truck with caste-orders of ‘Hinduism’ including the rationalization for it given in the Gita. He admired Sufism, presented a ‘Christothsava’ akin to Christmas, wrote on ‘Devotion to Buddhism’. His view on Siddhartha Gautama was: ‘This wisdom came, neither in texts of scripture, nor in symbols of deities, nor in religious practices sanctified by ages, but through the voice of a living man and the love that flowed from a human heart.’ The concept of nirvana had not attracted him and in that sense his perception of Buddhism seems to have been closer to that of the northern form than to the Theravada familiar to us here and in south-east Asia.

As with his experiments in theatre, where he moved away from the westernised urban mode to the folk-inspired dance-drama, so with music and song he moved away from the classical raag to folk music. That is a trajectory that our musicians should explore. He drew from other cultures – among the vibrant renderings given by Rezwana Chowdhury Bannya was one that gave a celebratory edge to ‘Ye banks & braes o’ bonnie Doon’.

My first encounter with robindra sangeeth occurred in Dhaka at the home of Mohamed Sirajuddin. When the late Prof. P P G L Siriwardena introduced us, Siraj exclaimed, ‘We are batch-mates’; what he meant was that he had joined the CSP (Civil Service of Pakistan) around the same time as I joined the CCS. As Secretary for Rural Development he did much to support cottage industries in Bangladesh and was familiar with our experience in that field. He invited artistes he valued, some, to my ears, at master level in robindra sangeeth, to perform at his place. I was struck by the variety of those who turned up to listen; there were friends, people from down – or off – the road, the Governor of the Central Bank, Ministers, colleagues … It reminded me of the glory days at Chitrasena’s in Kollupitiya. In an environment that seemed designed for chamber music, those songs sank into my heart. Among those who sang were a young couple who were TV stars but gave tribute to a middle-aged man, Farook, who was a master. Yes, robindra sangeeth, does need the male voice.

As Rezwana mentioned, delicately, as ‘in passing’, a problem that arises in appreciating such songs is that they are more sadly incomplete for the listener who has no Bangla than the emotions they do convey regardless. The affinity between Bangla and Sinhala is well known. (Some twenty years ago I sent a farmer from Berelihela, off Tissamaharama, to Dhaka for extended chats with fellow farmers from Asia and the Pacific. When I myself got there a few days later on allied business, I found that he had communicated very well indeed with people there in the only language he knew: his own). The present moment seems to offer an excellent opportunity for the High Commissions of Bangladesh and India to harness the active support of our government to set up an infrastructure for making Bangla accessible to our people. If, in these sort-of ‘market’ days a further incentive is required at this end, policy makers should be aware that workers and managers from here have contributed much to the resuscitation of a textile industry in Bangla that had been of an unparalleled excellence through the centuries.

by Gamini Seneviratne

In an article published in The Island of 01 May, Rohan Abeygunawardena has paid a glowing tribute to R. Premadasa. It is true Premadasa, as a man from a humble urban working class, was ambitious, and to boost his personal image he targeted the rural and the common man, marginalised by previous regimes. He set up projects to satisfy these folks and selected his own staff to carry out his orders to achieve what he desired. He got rid of those who were sticking to rules and regulations.

One such case is, J .R. Jayewardene brought in previous prestigious Civil Service officers to revamp the fading public service, and one such was the illustrious Chandi Chanmugam, as Secretary to the Treasury. He was called up by Premadasa and requested to provide funds for a welfare project and when he explained the difficulties, he was bluntly told that he (Premadasa) could find an officer who could make the funds available. In keeping with the traditions of the CCS, Chanmugam tendered his resignation. The vacancy was filled by R. Paskaralingam. When Secretaries questioned about funds, Paskaralingam, who chaired the Development Secretaries Committee, would say, “This is bosses orders, find the funds somehow. ” How the Secretaries provided funds is another story.

The next three projects to boost his image at government expense were the mobile office programme, the housing programme and Gamudawa.

As Assistant Secretary to the Ministry for Power and Energy, I was assigned to conduct the mobile service. As far as I could remember, the first Mobile Office was held in the Yapahuwa Electorate, in a village called Badalgama. The previous day, I rang up the area engineer and asked him to meet me at the school building, allocated for the Mobile Office, and to inform the UNP party supporter, who was to find accommodation for my overnight stay. When I arrived, the Area Engineer was there with men to make arrangements for the mobile office. Then two officers from the Presidential Mobile Office Division walked in and inquired as to why I had not hung a picture of Premadasa as he wanted his picture prominently displayed at Mobile Offices. When I said that I had no picture, they rushed back and came with a beautifully framed picture and hung it on the wall.

The following day, before going to the Mobile Office to take an oath, I went to my office to find that someone had garlanded the picture. It was later found that the clerk, who accompanied the area engineer, had overheard the conversation, knowing Premadasa’s whims and fancies.

The work started and as usual. Premadasa visited all offices and when he came to mine, I greeted him in the oriental fashion but his eyes were directed towards his picture and a beam of smile crossed his face. When leaving he said, “Carry on the good work.” Since then at every Mobile Office, I arranged for a special event for him to attend, such as the opening of a rural electrification project.

Gamudawa: This project was similar to the presidential mobile service. There was a variety show organised by the UNP supporters, and crowds dispersed happily. When the Gamudawa project was to be started, a request was made by the Presidential Secretariat to supply generators as the sites selected were far away from the transmission line. The then Chairman of the CEB, Prof. K. K. Y. W. Perera, who was also the Secretary to the Ministry for Power and Energy, politely replied requesting a payment to meet at least the cost. There was no reply and when I visited the Gamudawa held in Wellawaya, I saw CEB men operating the generators. On my return, I reported the matter to the Secretary to the Ministry and also the General Manager, CEB. They said that they were aware but remained silent.

At the first staff meeting, after the 1988 presidential election, Premadasa said, “Carry out my orders and those who do not agree could find other places.”

This was the start of deterioration in the power and energy sector. He brought in his own staff and the once well-managed sector fell into disarray. Premadasa removed Prof. Perera from the post of Chairman, CEB, and the Workshop Engineer, who supplied the generators without the knowledge of the management, was appointed Chairman, CEB, a reward for carrying out illegal orders! Having been in the state service for 40 years, I walked out happily without a farewell party. I took with me only a wooden block, on which my name was printed, and the Lion Flag, which I displayed at Mobile Offices.

President Premadasa also ordered that all policemen in the Eastern Province, surrender to the LTTE, with their weapons. The LTTE killed all of them, numbering over 600.

G. A. D. Sirimal
Boralesgamuwa